I published the following piece on my (now defunct) website, which I set up to distribute my books on the shareware principle, with, these days, predictable results. Since then the situation has only got worse. The agglomeration of publishing firms has continued; agents may or may not deign to reply to an enquiry; and between them Amazon and Apple have got the ebook market pretty well sewn up and can do as they please with recommendation algos and all the rest of it. Then of course piracy has continued to flourish. And as a final nail in the coffin of a print author’s income, the UK government has long since raised the VAT rate from 17.5 to 20%!
Anyhow, I though this might be of some historical interest, so here it is.
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Research published in 2007 by ALCS (the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society) reveals that British authors are struggling to survive.
According to the press release, ‘the typical UK author earns 33% less than the national average wage. If this trend in earnings continues will creators be able to continue contributing 8% of GDP in the UK? If we value our creative industries so highly, can the nation afford to let this decline in authors’ earnings continue?’
Moreover, ‘the top 10% of authors earn more than 50% of total income. In other equally skilled professions the bottom 50% of workers earn nearly 40% of total income. Only 20% of writers earn all their income from writing; 60% of professional writers need another job to survive.’
Why should writers be so badly paid? Why should such steep obstacles be put in the way of the small pool of talent on which rests the entire publishing industry?
Consider the hypothetical case of Jane, a young British author who has just written her first marketable novel. The book will have taken at least 1,000 hours of her time, perhaps twice or three times as much. To develop her craft she is likely to have written other novels already.
She has at last, after months or years of rejection, found a literary agent willing to take her on. (She knows it is pointless to submit a book directly to a publisher.)
The agent secures a deal with Quiggins & Craggs, a London publishing house. They offer an advance of £3,000 on a hardback edition, with a royalty rate on full-price sales of 10%. What this means is that, each time a book is sold at the cover price (let us say £15.99), Jane will be credited with £1.599. From this her agent deducts 15% in commission and charges 17.5% Value Added Tax on that commission, leaving Jane with £1.317 for every copy sold in this way. In order to earn her £3,000 advance, she must sell 1,876 copies at full price.
With the end of the Net Book Agreement and the rise of discounting by bookstores and supermarkets, fewer and fewer sales are being made at full price. Instead authors receive a percentage, typically 10%, of the price received by the publisher. Bookstores have a markup of at least 33%. The supermarkets and big chains get more.
Nevertheless, Jane’s talent is noticed by the critics, she gets some publicity, and the book sells comparatively well: perhaps 900 copies in all. She still owes Quiggins & Craggs £2,070. The hardback edition has little chance of recouping this, mainly because the shelf-life of a hardback novel by a new or middling writer is so short. Three weeks or a fortnight after publication day, unsold copies will be returned to the warehouse.
On the strength of her debut, Quiggins and the agent between them sell the paperback rights to Barabbas Books for £6,000. Jane’s standard contract with Quiggins requires her to share the proceeds of rights sales equally, so she is due another £3,000, less the £2,070 she owes them, making £930. Her agent sends her a cheque for £766. Jane’s earnings from her novel so far total £3,237. Assuming she has spent only 1,000 hours on it, her gross hourly pay for writing her book is something in the order of £3.25 – and she has been successful.
To quote ALCS again: ‘The first ten years are the toughest of a writer’s life. The typical earnings of a British writer aged between 25 and 34 are only £5,000 – a third less than their counterparts’ in Germany. This age bracket takes in those repaying student loans, starting out on their careers, getting on the property ladder and starting a family. Where’s the incentive to keep writing at this level of return?’
The only incentive to continue is the basic urge, in born writers, to tell a story. Jane is cursed with that urge, as well as blessed with the talent to fulfil it. Let us hope that she breaks through the ranks of also-rans: in the February 2008 distribution of UK Public Lending Right, which totalled £6.66m spread among 23,942 recipients, 359 authors received between £5,000 and £6,600 (the maximum payable); 17,923 received between £1 and £99.99.
I shall not continue with this depressing analysis of a British author’s earning capacity. By now you will have got the picture.
The word ‘author’ comes from the Latin word ‘auctor’, meaning an originator, causer, doer; the originator of an undertaking; the producer of a work of art; a writer. ‘Auctor’ in turn comes from the verb ‘augere’, to make, increase, cause to grow, fertilise; to strengthen; to enrich; to honour.
Without the author, there would be no publishing industry – no Quiggins or Craggs, no Barabbas, no agent, no hard-nosed buyer from a bookshop chain. Book-printers and binders and their suppliers would have to find other jobs to do. The government would be deprived of income; the Gross Domestic Product would not be swelled by publishers’ overseas earnings: the film rights, the TV rights, the Harry Potter merchandise and all the rest of it.
A book needs an author and a reader. Everyone in between is secondary, yet the reader must buy their groceries and pay their taxes. That is why Jane’s book costs so absurdly much in the shops; that is why Jane is living in poverty.
Another way
The physical distribution of paper books and their promotion comprise the beginning and end of the grip exerted by publishers on their authors. It is easy enough to get your book printed and bound, but another matter entirely to get it noticed by critics and stocked by bookshops.
The internet has already spawned quasi-conventional publishing companies, distributing text in electronic form and providing their authors with fee-collection services. Some authors are getting online for themselves and using various tactics to promote and market their work. But so far the results have been patchy.
It is inconvenient to read a long text on a computer screen; that’s one of the reasons why paper still dominates the publishing industry. Texts can be read on most PDAs, newer mobile phones and some iPods, but paper is easier on the eye.
The advent of E Ink heralds the beginning of a fundamental shift in the publishing industry. Print will become less important; digital text more so. E Ink produces a flicker-free display which is every bit as legible as a printed page. It is used in devices like the Sony Reader, Amazon Kindle and iRex iLiad. Such ebook-readers can store hundreds or even thousands of titles, doing away with the need for bookshelves. Some allow you to resize, reorientate, search, or annotate the text. Just as digital music-players have matured and become cheaper and universal, so will ebook-readers. The $100 price-point cannot be far away.
$100 will buy three or four hardbacks like Jane’s. At Project Gutenberg and elsewhere, there are thousands of public-domain etexts which can be downloaded for nothing. Once cheap ebook-readers become available, the market in paper-based editions of Jane Austen or Charles Dickens will all but collapse.
But what of copyright works? How can living authors be rewarded; how can they be encouraged to go on writing?
Some conventional publishers are selling their titles in electronic as well as paper form. Since the old model still prevails, the prices are high. To prevent unauthorized copying, these commercial ebooks are protected by digital rights management.
A protected ebook is normally device-specific. When your current ebook-reader is superseded, or fails, your library may become inaccessible, even though you have already paid for its contents.
A potential buyer of a paper-based book can pick it up and look through the pages. You can’t do that with a protected ebook. You might be able to see an excerpt, but otherwise you must buy such an ebook sight unseen. Would-be readers need to be able to browse: it’s an essential part of the choosing process.
Once a conventional book has been purchased, it becomes part of your household and anyone can read it. Your children grow up with books around and get into the habit of reading them. The same cannot be said of protected ebooks. DRM depletes the value of content of all kinds. For new writing and the spread of literacy, it is a disaster.
Reader and writer alike seem to be faced with an intractable problem. On the one hand, paper-based publishing is expensive and inefficient and keeps most authors in a state which is not conducive to creative work. On the other, we have the problem of deriving revenue from electronic books.
You’re probably familiar with the idea of shareware. Certain computer programmers allow their software to be freely copied and distributed. If users derive value from it, they are asked to make a modest payment. The main disadvantage is that some users do not pay. Nevertheless, those who do enable the shareware market to function. At least the programmers get a chance. In many cases they and their customers build up a happy and successful relationship.
Why do shareware users pay? Just to qualify for upgrades and technical support? Or to do the right thing?
I am sure that the majority of paying shareware users are actuated by conscience. The relationship between an author and a satisfied reader is even more personal than that between a programmer and a computer user. If computer software can be sold on the shareware principle, why not books? What is a book, if not software for the mind?
I suggest that new books should be released as unprotected electronic texts to be freely downloaded, copied, and read. The terms of use should be left to the authors, but most will need remuneration in order to go on writing.
The model I have adopted myself harks back to the age of artistic patronage and subscription. An 18th-century writer might have had a wealthy patron, or he might have produced a new work on the promise of payment from a list of subscribers; or both. In either case, the readers had a close connection with the writer and the book. I ask for payment of a one-time fee from those readers who have enjoyed or gained value from any of my novels.
The fee is related to the length of the work. The Tide Mill, my newest, is about 126,000 words long and I ask for £1.25 ($2.50). My first published novel, The Stone Arrow, is shorter, at about 71,000 words, and the fee for that is 85p ($1.70).
This is the shareware principle, adapted a little for novels. I not only let people duplicate and share my texts, I encourage it, because that way I might find new readers. The books are issued under a Creative Commons licence; I retain the copyright and remain free to license such rights as any third party wishes to acquire.
My blog lets readers post reviews, comments and questions; readers can also subscribe at no cost to a service which sends them all new blog-posts, so keeping them informed of developments.
I don’t expect to make a fortune from this, but the sort of people who enjoy novels like mine tend to be thoughtful and – dare I say it? – respectable. I trust them. They are likely to understand that the relationship between a writer and his reader is not purely creative: the writer must pay his bills like anybody else.
Whatever the returns from this model, they can hardly be more wretched and unfair than those from the present one.
The future
E-publishing by individual writers is the future of the book trade, certainly as far as fiction is concerned. Tens or even hundreds of thousands of titles will be offered by their eager authors, many of whom, alas, will be short of talent. The role of critics will be central. I foresee Web sites devoted to reviews and reader-rating, with features such as ‘if you liked that title, try one of these’. By this Darwinian process, good books will rise to notice. They need not be commercial, or popular, or constrained by genre. Quality will be the only criterion.
If talented authors are allowed to earn their living in this way, readers too will benefit immensely, obtaining the latest and best work for a fraction of the present price. There is no reason why paper editions should not also be produced, but their publishers will at last be relegated to their proper place in the scheme of things. There will be a place too for agents, to promote subsidiary rights.
Finally
The space between author and reader is at present not just populated by others: it is moderated by them. At every stage, from agent to publisher to bookstore, judgements are imposed on a writer’s work. Unseen and unaccountable decisions are taken as to what one may or may not read.
Freedom of speech is the fundamental freedom. Without it all other freedoms are compromised. I should be free to say whatever I like, as long as you have the identical right – even to the extent of publicly proving me stupid, evil, or just plain wrong. That is how the arts, how sciences and democracies flourish.
It has always been hard for a writer to break into print, but at least in the past the decisions to accept or reject were taken mainly on cultural grounds. Today other influences are at work. In all parts of the media, the role of accountants has grown: witness, in publishing, the trend towards selling many copies of just a few titles. Accountants are not really the best people to decide on artistic merit. Nor are those whose judgement is clouded by some fashionable political belief. A young editor at a publishing house, fresh from university and with little experience of the world, is ill equipped to exercise the power of life or death over a submitted manuscript.
The information revolution is gathering pace. Change is coming for the publishing trade.
For open-minded readers and their long-suffering, exploited, and penurious writers, it cannot come soon enough.
Richard Herley, 8 February 2008
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